April 13, 2006

The Rumsfeld Mutiny

First there was Zinni, but we were not surprised, really. Second there was Eaton, and we took note. Third there was Newbold, and, you know, we really started sensing a pattern here. And then, today, there was John Batiste, and we thought, holy shit, this is really a mutiny, of sorts.

Batiste's comments resonate especially within the Army: It is widely known there that he was offered a promotion to three-star rank to return to Iraq and be the No. 2 U.S. military officer there but he declined because he no longer wished to serve under Rumsfeld. Also, before going to Iraq, he worked at the highest level of the Pentagon, serving as the senior military assistant to Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense.

Batiste said he believes that the administration's handling of the Iraq war has violated fundamental military principles, such as unity of command and unity of effort. In other interviews, Batiste has said he thinks the violation of another military principle -- ensuring there are enough forces -- helped create the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal by putting too much responsibility on incompetent officers and undertrained troops.

But there's more:

Another retired officer, Army Maj. Gen. John Riggs, said he believes that his peer group is "a pretty closemouthed bunch" but that, even so, his sense is "everyone pretty much thinks Rumsfeld and the bunch around him should be cleared out. He emphatically agrees, Riggs said, explaining that he believes Rumsfeld and his advisers have "made fools of themselves, and totally underestimated what would be needed for a sustained conflict."

As far as Pete Pace is concerned, this country is exceptionally well-served by the man standing on my left. Nobody, nobody works harder than he does to take care of the PFCs and lance corporals and lieutenants and the captains. He does his homework. He works weekends, he works nights. People can question my judgment or his judgment, but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld.

But no one is questioning Rumsfeld's work ethic, or dedication, or patriotism, or anything like that. People are questioning his basic competence to wage the complex struggle we find ourselves in, one that he's proven manifestly unfit to prosecute with the requisite skill and professionalism. But don't take my word for it. Take it from: 1) a former Commander in Chief of United States Central Command (Zinni); 2) a Major General in charge of training the Iraqi Army (Eaton); 3) a Lt. General and Director for Operations of the Joint Staff (Newbold); and 4) a Major General in command of the First Infantry Division in Iraq from '04-05 (Batiste).

Are we going to listen to these men, serious men with multiple stars on their lapels who all want us to prevail in this war, or are we going to listen to hack bloggers and pundits and court attendants who continue to prostrate themselves in front of the Secretary of Defense like toadies and lick-spittles? Well, I'm with the former, big time.

Someone must pull the President aside, once and for all, and snap him into reality on this issue. It's urgent, and he's losing a lot of support, even from those like B.D. who supported him rather than Kerry because we felt he would prove better on the Iraq issue. We're furious Mr. President, by your inability to recognize reality and fire this disgraced Secretary. We just can't take it anymore either. How someone who went to Andover, Yale and HBS, even as a somewhat breezy legacy, can't at least recognize that he is sinking, and that staff changes are urgently needed to resuscitate his Presidency, is beyond me. And it's not just Andy Card and John Snow. The biggest albatross around POTUS neck is Don Rumsfeld. Bush must step up to bat, prove he's not dependent on him, and ask him for his resignation. There is no other choice. Legions of rank and file military, not to mention us citizens, have had it up to here with his hubris-ridden bungling about, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Bush's numbers crater into Chirac territory if he can't, somehow, summon the gumption to start leading his Administration out of this morass. To do so, again, he desperately needs new leadership at the Pentagon. I nominate Sam Nunn, but am open to other suggestions in comments.

I agree with your rants about Rumsfield but leaders MUST take resonsibility for the actions and performance their staff. Bush is the problem, blaming Rumsfeld is a convenient way to avoid the uncomfortable truth that Bush has personally failed the country. Stop blaming others for his incompetence. You are all but saying he is at fault....stop pussyfooting around and just accept what your are already saying. Bush is in over his head and doesn't have the ability to turn this around. Replacing every person in the cabinet is not going to fix Bush's inability to be interested or to lead. The corruption, incompetence and sleaze starts at the very very top.

I agree with your rants about Rumsfield but leaders MUST take resonsibility for the actions and performance their staff. Bush is the problem, blaming Rumsfeld is a convenient way to avoid the uncomfortable truth that Bush has personally failed the country. Stop blaming others for his incompetence. You are all but saying he is at fault....stop pussyfooting around and just accept what your are already saying. Bush is in over his head and doesn't have the ability to turn this around. Replacing every person in the cabinet is not going to fix Bush's inability to be interested or to lead. The corruption, incompetence and sleaze starts at the very very top.

Tregen, I think the post below where Mr. Djerejian extensively quoted Joseph Britt was as damning as you want to be on Bush. But it made another point: Bush may be so dissociated from the war that, given a less bullshit-prone defence secretary given to actually do the damn job Bush would be a less bullshit-prone president doing the damn job. Or to rephrase: what you say is true on paper but not in practice because Bush takes his lead on Iraq from the defense secretary, not the other way around, even though it _ought_ to be otherwise. _That_ is Bush's "fault," not the handling of the war, excepting indirectly (unfortunately), and for that reason (if you believe it), changing the defense secretary _can_ turn things around.

It is wishful thinking on the part of people to believe that Bush is a capable but poorly served president.

There is nothing, ever, in his entire life that would lead one to even suspect he is capable independent of being propped up by family and loyal family friends.

His presidency is no different than the rest of his life. That Bush is a 'miserable failure' is well documented.

The tragedy of this is that, thanks to people like you Greg, it the rest of us who suffer the consequences of his failure.

We tried to tell you.

BTW, Sam Nunn won't do it.

No capable person will risk destroying their ability to be effective by serving under Bush.

Bush is not looking for an independent voice, he simply wants someone who implements his political agenda. That has been proven by everyone who ever had anything credible to say about those who served in this administration, at any level.

It is a measure of the lack of seriousness within the Democratic Party that there are actual calls to impeach President Bush in the midst of a protracted military campaign. Bush is quite capable of running the war; unfortunately, he is not being well served by a Secretary of Defense who has been brilliant in some matters (tranfsformation, for instance), but blundering in the core competency of actually running a war. Greg's right to be pissed.

The conduct of OIF itself was pretty dadgum good. The occupation was a study in wishful thinking. Rumsfeld should have been able to look in the mirror and ask himself the questions about troop levels and COIN tactics. That he didn't was his first mistake. Abu Ghraib was his second. There are others. He needs to turn in his keys to his boss.

BTW, our guys on the ground are doing a magnificent job. Basically, they're unbeatable on the ground. They're simply not being well served by the SECDEF. Rummy knows this, which is why he was supersensitive and picked that unseemly fight with Condi Rice. He came out looking really bad after having picked a fight with a woman. You'll notice that Condi tried to smooth it over? Her interest was in not causing problems for the President, not in protecting her ego.

We have only one President at a time, Dems. Whether you like it or not. We are at war. Whether you like it or not. Pretending we are not will not make it go away. Victory in that war is central to our survival as a constitutional republic. Pretending that Bush Is Hitler will not make it so. Bush has beheaded nobody. Our enemies have beheaded lots of people.

If your sole answer is to "impeach Bush", you don't have much to bring to the table then, do you? Which reduces the notion of a "reality based community" to a risible joke.

Thankfully, diplomacy appears to be in the hands of adults, with Condi and her people over at State having wrested control of policy from Rumsfeld and Cheney. The notion of Sam Nunn as SecDef would restore bipartisanship to foreign and defense policy and might, just might, add a note of Quietism (hat tip: Grand Ayatollah Sistani...) to the fever swamp of the Party of Impeachment. After all, Truman and Marshall did not hesitate to deal with Vandenberg, even during the whole Hiss-Chambers affair. I don't see why that can't happen again, especially during wartime.

Of course, Democrats would have to give up their dreams of impeachment and sending Bush before a War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. So that's asking a lot of you people, isn't it? Of course, we Republicans are also asking you to remember that people like bin Laden and Zarqawi are actually the enemy, not George W. Bush, dyslexic urban cowboy from Midland, Texas. That's asking a lot, too.

Section8, I hesitate to give your screed the dignity of a response, but....

a Secretary of Defense who has been brilliant in some matters (tranfsformation, for instance), but blundering in the core competency of actually running a war.

Do you have some particular reason to think that Rumsfeld has been somehow competent at transformation? Is it perhaps that he talks well about transformation?

Victory in that war is central to our survival as a constitutional republic.

Which war is this you're speaking of?

Central to our survival as a constitutional republic? The only war I see that fits that description is Bush's war against lhe Constitution. It's central that we win against him.

But when people talk about war they usually mean iraq and afghanistan, or perhaps the WoT. Or maybe the new war Bush is talking about starting against iran. There is nothing like a gameplan for winning those, or even criteria for what winning would look like. Just a few extremely movable goalposts, like elections.

Just a small comment. I know that RedStaters.. or "WhiteSheeters" as I prefer to call them.. cannot resist calling any Democratic proposal "risible", but please let Ranter Nine's "risible joke" die a timely death.

Why should Bush do anything? who's going to stop him? Congress has already proved that they are gutless when it comes to even censuring Bush. There is not one thing that this president has done right since he has been in office. He went to war by lying to the American people and then blames the intelligence. How can he get away with this? If the CIA told him to fire a nuculear weapon at Iran, is he able to say OOPS the intel was wrong. This bubblehead has not had to take responsibilty for any of his mistakes. When Congress refuses to stop him from tearing up the Constitution how can he be stopped? He knows that no-one will challenge him on anything so he's getting bolder and bolder. I feel so bad for our troops because he's using them to dodge criticism. Everytime someone challenges him, FOX news and he use their ,"you hate the troops" line and everyone runs away with their tails between their legs. He takes heros like John Kerry and John Murtha and drags their name through the mud. He and his cronies don't know anything about running a war because they were never in one. Their playing stratego with our brave youths. Bush, Cheney and rummy are guilty of sedition and should be on trial, right after someone finds the pictures he has of Congress having GAY SEX w/ each other and destroys them.

I am afraid Jerry Savage has it right. Maybe if the Democrats take back at least the Senate in the Fall Elections things will change. Until then Boy George and his Puppetmasters are free to inflict whatever damage they like upon the USA & the World.
God Forgive Us!

I am afraid Jerry Savage has it right. Maybe if the Democrats take back at least the Senate in the Fall Elections things will change. Until then Boy George and his Puppetmasters are free to inflict whatever damage they like upon the USA & the World.
God Forgive Us!

CNN 4/13/06: The commander who led the elite 82nd Airborne Division during its mission in Iraq has joined the chorus of retired generals urging Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quit. "Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him," retired Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack said. He is the fifth general -- and second to have served in Iraq under Rumsfeld -- to call for his resignation.

The President's staff is a carefully hand-picked and interlocking network of mutual-ass-coverers, picked mainly for their loyalty to the team, not their competence. Saddam used to ensure loyalty by forcing his inner circle to commit violent crimes - like the murder of political rivals - to bind them to him. (Remember, Iraq's a tribal nation if it's anything - kill a member of another tribe, and you need strong backup, just to survive.) Rummy's survival has nothing to do with his competence, or thee quality of government - or otherwise - it has EVERYTHING to do with the mutual-ass-covering pact, and the ability to RETAIN POWER. Rummy's been part of the team long enough that he knows exactly where most of the bodies are buried, which closets have skeletons in them. While that remains true, he's bulletproof. Loyalty to Rummy BY the gang will result in Rummy's continued loyalty to the rest of the gang - which makes it a far safer bet for them to stick with him than to cut him loose.

Rummy used to be CEO of a pharmaceutical company called JD Searle, later taken over by Monsanto. Their "research" methods were sufficiently crooked as to lead the FDA to publish a 57-page document decrying their lack of honesty, and for the law to be changed making a company's own research findings inadmissable for FDA testing. One of the company's potentially lucrative products was the sweetener "Aspartame". Rummy, as CEO of the company, vowed that he'd get it approved. He quit JD Searle to help form the core of the first Reagan Administration, and helped pick other members of the team - including a new FDA commissioner. The new commissioner promptly overruled the FDA's own science panel, and certified Aspartame safe over their objections... then he quit and went to work (at a higher rate of pay) for a contractor to the company. That Rummy was later accused of "sexing up" the intel on Iraq's WMD's should come as zero surprise to anyone familiar with his track record. And given than Aspartame (never properly tested) is now consumed in vast quantities by the USA's children... Rummy's commitment to the welfare of US citizens (as opposed tho his commitment to his own party's grasp on power) leaves a lot to be desired. This guy has the conscience of a reptile, and a track record to prove it. The only amazing thing here is that it's taken people so long to fight their way through the Will Rogers bullshit to see the calcuatingly murderous apparatchik beneath.

Let me swim against the tide for a moment and say that my views on Rumsfeld are not as completely negative as some people seem to think.

I have some sympathy for what Rumsfeld sought to do with respect to military transformation, beginning months before 9/11. He has to his credit the successful 2001 campaign in Afghanistan, and his aversion to counterinsurgency and planning for a long-term occupation of Iraq -- so much vilified here and elsewhere -- reflects a view of American interests and Iraq's priority among them that has much to be said for it.

Having said that, though, one must also say this: anyone in Rumsfeld's position will be judged by history not only for the ends he pursued but for the means he used to pursue them. No Secretary of Defense, in any administration, has the capacity to make policy for the whole government, even if it looks (as it may from time to time) that a vacuum of authority exists, ripe for an assertive Pentagon to fill. Rumsfeld has figured in this sort of situation before, during the Presidency of the politically crippled Gerald Ford. At that time Rumsfeld saw a national political future for himself; his efforts to make it a reality led him to bring the entire foreign policy of the United States to a grinding halt for over a year.

Having served under one President unable to give him direction and unwilling to dismiss him, Rumsfeld has found his way into the administration of another. This is a misfortune in every way. A strong President unwilling to give Rumsfeld a blank check to run the military or tolerate his mania for starting (and winning) bureaucratic battles might have gotten from Rumsfeld truly outstanding performance. Armed with the trump cards of the Presidency himself, Rumsfeld might have gotten more than part way toward military transformation and shunned the multi-year commitment to doing whatever it is we are supposed to be doing in Iraq.

But as it is Rumsfeld has focused his attention fiercely on those subjects that interested him and slacked off those that didn't, knowing that whatever he did the Bush White House would approve it. During the first term he, together with the Vice President and his staff, seized control of most American foreign policy -- not knowing what to do with it, he has gradually let some control be ceded back to the State Department. He demanded and got full control over Iraqi reconstruction, a cause he never really believed in and which subsequently failed. Determined to have the Pentagon be the lead counter-terrorism agency, he lost interest once the bureaucratic battle was won and allowed policies to be pursued that have cost us much politically without yielding any clear return in the fight against terrorism. Still committed to military transformation, Rumsfeld has declined to put his own position at risk by stepping forward with proposals to kill popular weapons procurement programs, the cost of which make completing military transformation impractical.

I have seen often the comment that the real problem here is not Rumsfeld, but President Bush. For the most part I agree with this. It may be that any President would have found Rumsfeld a difficult subordinate -- Gerald Ford, an abler and far more responsible person than George W. Bush, certainly did -- but even difficult subordinates can be managed, and dismissed if the trouble they cause shows signs of exceeding the good they can do. They can be, that is, if the Presidents they serve know their own minds and are engaged enough in the design and implementation of policy that no subordinate starts to think of himself as a Deputy President. Rumsfeld might have rendered good, even historic service under a strong President; it has been his fate to serve under weak ones.

One takes these comments, at different value, Swannack, I value most, even though it was his unit, the 82nd, that blundered into
Fallujah: in the first days of the war. Baptiste, next,because of
his long tour in Al Anbar. Eaton, having selected the army units that collapsed in Fallujah in the spring of '04; which makes me
doubt how these forces would have held together without de-Baathification; not to mention what that alternate course would
have meant to the Shia/Kurd majority; nearly shattered by the
Anfal campaign, and the concurrent Shia infideh in the South.
Odd, how the sheiks of Ramadi and Fallujah, never expressed
their dissent to Saddam in that way. Zinni, I value the least due
to his virtual inactivity at his CENTCOM post, in the quarter decade
before 9/11; and his adoption of the Arabist pro-stability, anti-Israel attitude since. As to Rumsfeld's rank as Defense Secretary;
I doubt those who make the comparison to Mcnamara; for one
thing; "Mr. Edsel" didn't even believe in that war, and his perfor
mance on the Cuba crises. Stimson, without his fastidiousness about the propriety of the Black Chamber ; Forrestal. the first Secretary; To kick out Rumsfeld at this point; would be considered a victory by the terrorists is to misread the lessons of British administration in Iraq in the 20s; outlined by Maj. Rayburn in the recent Foreign Affairs, which relates the rise of the Quit
Mesopotamia coalition; prompting the premature retreat from Iraq, that the likes of Capt. John Glubb dealt with; into which stepped the Wahhabist counterpart of the Black 100s; the rise of the Ilkwan, the proto Al Queda militia of the Saud clan; and led to the surrender of the mandate which provoked the Golden Square coups of '35 and '41; and ultimately led to the Baathist interregnum; that lasted till three years ago

"We have only one President at a time, Dems. Whether you like it or not. We are at war. Whether you like it or not. Pretending we are not will not make it go away. Victory in that war is central to our survival as a constitutional republic."

Victory in this war is in no way, shape or form central to our survival as a constitutional republic. What is central to our survival as a constitutional republic is ensuring that the mechanisms of government continue to function and that the head of the executive branch does not flagrantly and repeatedly break the law while claiming that the legislative branch has no authority on him. That is fundamentally corrosive to our constitutional republic. (As, for that matter, is the act of wiretapping domestic conversations without court orders, holding detainees indefinitely without charges, so on and so on. Engaging in unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations and repeatedly endorsing torture isn't a threat to our survival, but it's certainly a threat to the survival of our reputation as an enlightened or benevolent power.) Not only is George Bush a greater threat to our constitutional republic remaining something recognizable, but there is also something concrete and immediate that can be done about him.

You really have to justify alarmist rhetoric like "central to our survival as a constitutional republic." When you let phrases like that slide, weird things happen...like unprovoked invasions of unthreatening countries, all in the name of our very survival.

"How someone who went to Andover, Yale and HBS, even as a somewhat breezy legacy, can't at least recognize that he is sinking, and that staff changes are urgently needed to resuscitate his Presidency, is beyond me."

The military piling-on means the Rummy debate is over. The question is: What will (KR tell) GWB (to) do now?

As for GWB's (interest in using his) intellectual capacity, that's pretty much decided too, isn't it. This is a guy who doesn't read books and is proud of it. A "C" student (at best) who is proud of it, and likes to rub the noses of very bright, very accomplished subordinates in the fact that he is "The Man" and they work for him.

Jane Smiley gets it right:

1. Bush doesn't know - -

you disagree with him. Nothing about you makes you of interest to George W. Bush once you no longer agree with and support him. No degree of relationship (father, mother, etc.), no longstanding friendly intercourse (Jack Abramoff), no degree of expertise (Brent Scowcroft), no essential importance (Tony Blair, American voters) makes any difference. There is nothing you have to offer that makes Bush want to know you once you have come to disagree with him. Your opinions and feelings now exist in a world entirely external to the mind of George W. Bush. You are now just one of those "polls" that he pays no attention to. When you were on his side, you thought that showed "integrity" on his part. It doesn't. It shows an absolute inability to learn from experience.

2. Bush doesn't care - -

whether you disagree with him. As a man who has dispensed with the reality-based world, and is entirely protected by his handlers from feeling the effects of that world, he is indifferent to what you now think is real. Is the Iraq war a failure and a quagmire? Bush doesn't care. Is global warming beginning to affect us right now? So what. Have all of his policies with regard to Iran been misguided and counter-productive? He never thinks about it. You know that Katrina tape in which Bush never asked a question? It doesn't matter how much you know or how passionately you feel or, most importantly, what degree of disintegration you see around you, he's not going to ask you a question. You and your ideas are dead to him. You cannot change his mind. Nine percent of polled Americans would agree with attacking Iran right now. To George Bush, that will be a mandate, if and when he feels like doing it, because...

3. Bush does what he feels like doing - -

and he deeply resents being told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. This is called a "sense of entitlement". Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done. He did not complete his flight training, he failed at oil investing, he was a front man and a glad-hander as a baseball owner. As the Governor of Texas, he originated one educational program that turned out to be a debacle; as the President of the US, his policies have constituted one screw-up after another. You have stuck with him through all of this, made excuses for him, bailed him out. From his point of view, he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's never had to before this.

It's obvious, Greg, that you have Rummy nailed. But you're still wasting time trying to rationalize the mind and the behavior of our Imperial President.

1) his specific mistakes
2) what should have been done instead, and
3) how the alternatives would have created better outcomes.

I believe this exercise would produce a hackneyed list of recycled CW from the MSM such as more troops needed initially, mistake of disbanding the Iraqi army, not anticipating the strength of the insurgency, Abu Ghraid mismanagement, etc. All these issues are complicated and debatable to one exent or another. Probably why no one has tied to take them on. The generals certainly did not.

"Hack Bloggers"? Jeez Greg, don't be so hard on yourself, we're not listening to you. The swearing, the vapors, the channeling of VPisms "Big Time"? Suddenly you're the Count's angry cousin: "Five, Five...NO Six SIX vunderful dissentors..BOOM! ..Ahh-hah-hah.. and attacking the wrong target. One can only imagine what you must say about poor laura as you sit there at your computer, Blogging. Why not just admit the crush and move on?

Tikipanda, if you look at Cheney and follow the money you'll want to impeach him.

What's all this about blaming the messenger? The war is going very badly. The generals know it. You know it. Everybody knows it. When a company goes badly, who's responsible? The CEO. He's the one who takes responsibility for his company.

So OK, the USA isn't doing so well. Who you gonna put the responsibility on? Why on Rumsfeld, of course!

The war is going badly? Casualties are down across the board among both American soldiers and Iraqi military and civilians. The give and take of a democratically elected government is proceeding apace. The war is going just fine but the MSM's propaganda campaign is defnitely taking its toll on homefront morale.